I'm a writer, journalist, and the editor of The Gambit, the alt-weekly newspaper in New Orleans.

Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.

Publishing:Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).

May 19, 2008

Crediting cartoonists

Matt Bors has an interesting item about The New York Times and its policy regarding editorial cartoonists: it seems the paper Photoshops out their signatures before running them in the paper. I'd never heard of such a thing, but commenters on his blog say that it's not a policy exclusive to the Times. Matt notes that many of the cartoonists have won Pulitzers for their drawing, and asks:

Would a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist be asked to put up with this
level of ineptitude and insulting treatment of their craft?

I agree with him, but I'll bet that the Times (and other publications) consider editorial cartoons to be the equivalent of photographs or graphics rather than columns, and graphic elements take a standard credit line instead of a signature.

Nevertheless, I'd say that the artist's signature is an element of the drawing and shouldn't be retouched out of existence, any more than an element in a photograph should be retouched.

BOOKS

Booklist:
"A worthy successor to Tight Shot, Allman's insider view of the seamier side of Hollywood is not only hip and entertaining but also has something serious to say about our insatiable hunger for tabloid thrills."

Washington Post:
"Barbed, breezy and often pretty funny...sharp and entertaining. Allman can be very funny, and Hot Shot complements nicely the less forgiving takes on Los Angeles as the future of us all. "

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EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE
BEST FIRST NOVEL
MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

Booklist:
"Allman turns a very sardonic pen loose on Hollywood's glitz-and-glamour crowd in this entertaining first novel... An impressive debut and an almost sure thing for a sequel."

STAGE

BOO AND THE SHREVEPORT BABY

A French Quarter convenience-store clerk has a hilariously traumatic encounter with a pair of Shreveport tourists. Part of Native Tongues 3 (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2001; Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago; 2006).

A recreation of an evening at the notorious New Orleans 1950s female-impersonator nightclub My-O-My (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2005).

THE LOVE GIFT

A lonely man discovers purpose when he intercepts a televangelist's letters from his neighbor's mailbox. Part of the Dramarama New Plays Festival (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; 2004).

BABYDADDY

A black father discovers that no good deed goes unpunished when he helps his white neighbor bail her son out of Orleans Parish Prison. (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2004; Walker Percy Southern Playwrights Festival, Covington; 2007).

TWO IN THE BUSH

An evening of comedies. In The Stud Mule, the world's richest woman arranges to be impregnated by a doltish escort; in Snatching Victory, an earnest college student runs afoul of her lecherous professor and the dour head of a women's-studies department (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2003).

NEW ORLEANS READING

Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit RuinedOne of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.

Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans MattersThe best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".